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Aperture Cellars acquires Sonoma County’s Farrow Ranch
After allegedly eyeing the property for several years, Aperture owner Jesse Katz has closed on the sale of the 75-acre property in California’s Alexander Valley.
The new addition to Aperture’s existing holdings in Healdsburg cements the winery’s status as a major player in California’s wine scene, bumping the company’s assets up to 120 acres of vines.
Katz, who became the youngest head winemaker in the U.S. when he joined Lancaster Estate in Alexander Valley, Sonoma, is said to have been eyeing up the Farrow Ranch property for several years. Its former owner, Carol Farrow, who bought the property with her husband in 1983, is a family friend and has sold Malbec and Cabernet Sauvignon grapes to Katz since 2012.
The initial asking price was US$18.9million, with the sale to include the entire estate, including multiple luxury mansions. However, Katz convinced Farrow to sell just one parcel of the land, without the mansion properties, reported The San Francisco Chronicle.
The vineyard scales almost 1,000 feet in elevation, and is shaped like “a big bowl”, Katz has said, with sloping hills climbing up from a valley into the foothills of the Mayacamas coastal mountain range. Its volcanic soils make it ideal for producing powerful, concentrated red wines. Malbec vines, in particular, thrive in the terroir, with Katz’s “cult wine” Devil Proof Malbec already made from grapes grown on its slopes.
The Aperture Cellars founder has said previously that when he returned to California after working several harvests around the world, including in Argentina, he was determined to find vineyards in Sonoma where he could make a Malbec that could stand toe to toe with the great wines of the world.
In 1987, Farrow Ranch became the first in Sonoma County to implement the now-standard open trellis planting system allowing for precision shoot positioning on each vine.
Katz has revealed that he plans to convert as much of the vineyard as possible to dry farming, eliminating any drip irrigation to the vines.
The acquisition is the latest in a line of developments for Aperture, which include purchasing a Russian River Valley vineyard in 2016, building a new winery in Healdsburg in 2019 and opening a state-of-the-art visitor centre in 2020.